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We agree that a world where self-esteem is unrelated to body size would be a wonderful place, but we also know that most people feel depressed and embarrassed about their weight and often need some tough love.

~NO THEY DO NOT. They need you holier-than-thou shitheads to recognize them as human and not some kind of inferior sub-species. And how dare you call a campaign that promotes hate and junior high school epithets “tough love”? How is making fun of a whole class of people based on their looks any kind of love? Can you please explain that?~

Our aim was not to insult people who are overweight but to get people talking-and then persuade them to make a simple, positive change for their health. We have heard from people who were offended by our
message, and we have been yelled at on talk shows, but we have also heard from overweight people who expressed support for our tactics, including some women whose vegetarian weight-loss journeys we plan to chronicle on our Web site.

~Soooo because some fat people supported your message of hate that means we all do? There were some women who wished the equal rights movement would just hush up too, that didn’t mean that treating women like they didn’t have the same rights and dignity as men was oh so cool and should have been allowed to continue.
And how dare you insult me by thinking I would be stupid enough to believe that your goal with that ad was to get people talking. Your goal was to promote your agenda by blatantly making fun of people you deem inferior. You also expected this back-fat, back lash so that you could garner more publicity for your lame and misguided organization. Hell I bet you had your calm-the-poor-screamin-fatties-down form letters ready to go before you even put that billboard up!~

While this billboard has caused some people to “shoot the messenger,” it has also created a great debate about the message: that people are eating themselves to death. Americans now eat more than 1 million animals an hour-animals who are raised and killed in appallingly cruel conditions. Something drastic must be done to shake up society’s
complacent acceptance of the national obesity epidemic, and we want people to know that they have options: Pills and procedures are not the solution. The human illnesses and animal suffering that a meat-heavy diet causes are completely unnecessary: a pure vegetarian diet is the optimum diet.

~It is none of your business what I eat or do not eat you sanctimonious assholes. It is none of your business if I am healthy or unhealthy. And don’t give me that health care cost crap. You aren’t paying a damn dime for me, and even if you were so what? Suppose you suddenly woke up with cancer, people do you know, even the holy vegans. I wouldn’t care that I was paying into a system for you. Or say you got AIDS and happened to be gay. I would not hate you for that and wag my finger at you for having same-sex relationships BECAUSE IT’S NONE OF MY DAMN BUSINESS.~

We take obesity very seriously indeed, which is why we think it would be cruel not to tell people about how, by going vegetarian, they can help themselves, animals, and the Earth. If change is going to come, someone must stir things up. PETA won’t shy away from doing so. Unless they are truly among the few with an irreversible medical condition, there is no
reason for people to be carrying around extra weight.

~What?? Please tell me you did not just say that. Please please please? Maybe I just have no desire to look like you think I should you idiots. Is that so hard to grasp???~

By encouraging people who want to lose weight to go vegetarian instead of resorting to unhealthy fad diets, we hope to offer them a choice that the
multimillion-dollar diet industry won’t give them: a long-term strategy for maintaining a healthy weight.

~If fat people want to lose weight that’s their business and none of yours. It is our choice and none of yours. We are not mentally challenged children who need guidance from YOU.~

Research has shown that higher body mass index is associated with a greater risk of premature death from all causes. For example, according to the American Heart Association, obesity contributes to heart disease, America’s number one cause of death. The American Dietetic Association says that vegetarians have lower rates of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and obesity than meat-eaters do. Reputable studies have shown that fad “weight loss” diets don’t work long-term-but going vegetarian does. Studies published in the Journal of Clinical Nutrition and the New England Journal of Medicine have found that vegetarians are far less likely to be overweight than meat eaters are. Obesity is an epidemic,

~An epidemic is something you can catch and you assholes are so afraid of catching fat disease that you ignore all the real data for sensationalist media bullshit that is paid for by the pharmaceutical companies.~

not something that children should grow up accepting as perfectly normal.

~It is perfectly normal to be fat you morons. 2/3 of people in this country can be defined as fat by one system or another. You should think about that. Not only are their more of us, but we are BIGGER than you. I would keep that in mind.~

We want a healthy, humane world, and we think everyone else does too.

~No you do not. You want a world where everyone celebrates diversity, as long as each difference is cleared by YOU. If people want to be different, fine. But they better look, talk, eat, breathe, fuck, sleep, dream, and live just like you or it’s not okay.~

Thank you again for sharing your thoughts and for giving us the opportunity to share ours. Not everyone can agree on everything in this world, and, again, if you were offended, we regret that.

~Offended? No. Morally outraged and ready to go to war? Hell yes. I don’t expect everyone to agree with me, but I expect the common respect due to me as a human being no matter what your small little minds think of me. I know I will always be hated, ridiculed, and vilified for how I look and I know that people like you will make sure of it.~

Sincerely,

The PETA Staff
http://www.PETA.org

~Fuck you very much,
Victoria Gail Journigan~

It reminds me of a time a fellow NAAFAn sent me a clip from a Seattle newspaper where one vegetarian, in response to an article about animal testing of artificial sweeteners, pretty much blamed fat people for the research. I was still at Berkeley at the time, and brought this to some buddies in ALF and asked them about this, and they all said they didn’t for once believe that fat people as a group were to blame for these tests. And these were people who rescued animals out of the Life Sciences Building!

As for the HLN segment, oh my, Marilyn got tag-teamed. Were I in her seat, I think I would have just gone all hammer and sickle on these two. Why? Because the host used the fact of the farm bill’s priorities being perverted by the ag industry to the benefit of the fast food industry in order to promote the anti-public-care line of the health care industry, while same host simultaneously positioned herself as a player in the reduction industry the line of which PETA insists on continuing to tail. “I’ve got it, let’s try to make medicine out of the mechanisms of capital to cure ills born of capital!” How many of us here would love to see the farm bill divert some of those subsidies from chem ag and the big five to organic agriculture? There are things that could be done with that legislation to assure that more nutritious and humanely raised MEAT gets on American plates!

It seems to me that if PETA spent more time worrying about their own image, rather than alienating people, they’d fare a lot better.

This billboard made me just about as angry as finding out that Cookie Johnson’s new line of “real jeans for real women” only goes up to a size 18. So, everyone who wears a bigger size than that is fake, really? Or maybe we’re just too busy “being fat” to wear jeans at all?

As a side note, I’ve been reading this blog for awhile, but never felt really compelled to post before. I just know that it’s made me feel infinitely better about my body, and my life. Thank you everyone just for being here!

That was actually what my initial comment to Gwenny was mostly trying to do. If you go back and read it, I spent the first portion of the comment explaining why that particular word is problematic. The last paragraph, I took on her tone, which I found offensive. I provided an explanation, I provided links to other sources, trying to help her and anyone else grasp some stuff that was at play there, and translate her tone in a way that would make obvious why it was problematic.

And her immediate response was to start shrieking at me.

If she’d replied with anything other than an immediate attack on me, anything that indicated she was at least trying to reflect on what she said and how it was interpreted, there wouldn’t have been a Thing. We can’t control how people react to being confronted, so I don’t think imploring others to be “nicer” is really a useful strategy. Anyone who flips their shit the moment they get questioned is probably not going to last here, and my patience, at least, is not infinite.

So much of your (generic) worldview can get challenged here, you have to come to the SP comments with a sense of humility, I think. Which means when someone calls you out, you don’t go right to attack mode, you stop and think.

Also I understand that no matter how long I’ve been here, people should and will continue to call me out when I mess up. *g*

DRST
Who was so totally told by Gwenny, she will now go jump into a Christmas tree.

A bit late but … this isn’t true. Blue whales – along with other baleen whales – primarily feed on krill, which are planktonic crustaceans very like shrimp. Krill, in turn, feed on phytoplankton, and likely zooplankton as well. And yes, zooplankton do qualify, at least in biological terms, as ‘animal.’

So far as I know, the only herbivorous marine mammal is the manatee.

-O.M.G. ROFLBATTLECOPTER